Mr CAMPBELL(5.58 p.m.) —I often get the impression that this building is actually the Titanic , and we are in here shuffling the deckchairs. I recall that, when I first came to this parliament, mine was the most marginal seat in Australia and the party to which I then belonged put on marginal members meetings. I attended one of these and the member for Lalor (Mr Barry Jones), who was a great name, came down to talk to us.

He put up a white board and went through a particular example—I cannot remember exactly what it was now. He put it on the board and said, `Because of this, et cetera,' and I marvelled at the intellect of this man, at how lucid he was and how clearly he could see the problem. When he got to the bottom, however, he said, `And because of this . . . ', and he drew completely the wrong conclusion—a conclusion which could not be sustained in any way from his very lucid argument.

I suspect that if members of parliament today were to sit back and listen to what they say—including the member for Gellibrand (Mr Willis)—they would find within what they say the germ of the truth of this matter. The government and the opposition know that this is not about creating jobs. This is about placating the small business sector. That is important.

The small business sector is very important to Australia. But this legislation is not necessarily important, although I support it wholeheartedly. I would go further, however, and make 100 people the minimum and not 15. From my experience of small businesses, overwhelmingly they do not put people on in order to sack them. They do not employ people in order to rip them off. If that is the case in some circumstances, it is much more important that an overall increase in employment opportunities is provided.

Small business believes that this legislation does impede it. I know small businesses which are outside the scope of this legislation but which fervently believe that they are affected by it. I know doctors who are putting staff on on a casual basis for fear of permanent employment. That is what has been engendered. So there is a use in this business.

Nobody here seriously believes that the government is responsible for the near record levels of low inflation that we have. The record low inflation in this country is because nothing is happening in the economy. In short, the economy is stuffed. That is the truth of the matter and that is why inflation is low.

In the government's industrial relations legislation the only thing of any value is the protection for small business, although that protection is largely, as I have said, emotional. The rest of it is a hark back to where the minister comes from—the 1950s. It is quite clear that there is no merit in it, but if the Labor Party is foolish enough to oppose it in the Senate and it becomes an item for a double dissolution, then all I can say is `Heaven help the Labor Party'—that is, of course, if the Prime Minister (Mr Howard), as the leader of that urban centralist coalition that occupies the other side of the House, has the nerve for it, which I very much doubt.

The truth is this: if you are going to protect the interests of workers—and I am all for that—you do that by creating jobs in the economy. There are lots of things that can be done to create jobs—is that my mobile phone ringing?

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mrs Sullivan) —Order!

Mr CAMPBELL —Very embarrassing. It is probably from God.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER —It is also disorderly. Switch it off before you enter the chamber next time.

Mr CAMPBELL —I thought it was screened; it certainly should be.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER —Perhaps the member for Kalgoorlie might take a little guidance. It has been ruled that mobile phones are not permitted in the chamber. Will you note that for the future, whether you think the place is screened against them or not. Please continue with your speech.

Mr CAMPBELL —It was an oversight, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will observe it in future.

In respect of employment there are lots of things the government could do to engender employment. A lot of those jobs that the member for Gellibrand talked about are, in fact, part-time jobs and jobs in the tourist industry. A lot of them are jobs in the quasi-government area. So I think the figures are being fudged anyway. But it would certainly assist small business enormously if governments were committed to paying their bills in 30 days. It would also assist small business, particularly in regional and rural areas, if governments were prepared to buy locally on occasions. But governments will not do this; they will not undertake these very sensible things. If governments would see that major government entities like the armed forces purchased Australia, then there would be many more jobs in the community. There are so many things that we could do to create jobs and this is what will give workers protection.

If you have a situation where a worker has job opportunities, it is much harder to erode worker conditions. When you have high levels of unemployment there is nothing the unions can do in the long run to stop the erosion of wages and conditions. That is exactly what the opposition in many cases wants. They want this continual erosion. They think that this is somehow good for the economy when it is quite clear that it is not. I have said in this parliament many times that the only future I want for my kids and for everyone else's kids is a high standard of living. This requires high wages, high levels of education and high levels of training. We are going backwards in all those areas. I live in fear that I am going to hand my kids a worse country than the one I inherited from my parents.

You have to accept the emotional context of these things. Small business has this perception. In many cases they are right. In my own electorate I know of cases where a small business has been taken to the cleaners by workers with a little experience. Whole businesses have been threatened, in some cases ruined. Small business is giving up because of this unfair dismissal legislation. It is not good enough to say, as the member for Gellibrand said, that it is only two per cent. That two per cent is often very critical. While small business believes that it is being impeded, you have to take cognisance of that because small business is the only opportunity we are going to see for growth in the economy. We will not see it just with this legislation. I can assure you of that.

The member for Paterson (Mr Bob Baldwin) mentioned the government's fair trading inquiry. I think the report was very good. It dealt basically with only the retail trade sector and that was a little narrow. The good work of that committee will come to nought because it will put the government, if it implements it, in conflict with big business and, from my experience, big business wins. The member for Gellibrand is absolutely right when he says that you are not going to see massive growth in employment by passing this legislation. That does not, however, mean that it should not be passed.

While you have governments that cling—both parties in this House are the same—to this discredited policy of rational economics, which is neither rational nor economic (it is political ideology), you are going to see a continual erosion of jobs.

The National Farmers Federation has just put out a circular. The National Farmers Federation is a joke. It certainly does not represent the interests of the rural sector, and the rural sector is recognising in droves that this is the case. I think the citrus growers have made a decision to pull out. They have every justification for doing so.

Mr Blight, the head of the National Farmers Federation, said recently that it was a disgrace that workers in the car industry were subsidised $20,000 each. If that was true, so what? If those people were on the dole they would not have to have many kids before the taxpayer was subsidising them that much on the dole. It is far better to have the import replacement manufacturing that went with it. But, of course, it was not true. That took only the people employed directly in the car industry, not all the people who contribute to it. It is quite clear that it is the erosion of the manufacturing industry that has done enormous damage to this country. Until that is recognised, and it does not appear to be recognised by either party—certainly there was no greater architect of the demise of the manufacturing industry than Paul Keating—we are not going to get anywhere in terms of creating employment.

What is needed is some confidence in the community, and that will do more to stop inflation than this god we have created of low inflation. That will do more to stop that. Once you get some confidence back in there, see if the Treasurer (Mr Costello) can come in here and gloat over low inflation numbers. I can tell this House and the nation now that the reason we have this low inflation is that there is simply nothing happening out there in the economy.

There are many areas where we could be generating jobs. It makes me laugh that in the Mortimer report they go to great pains to say, `We are not picking winners.' The Prime Minister says, `We are not picking winners, but we have got to support the information superhighway.' It is quite clear that this government is not going to spend on the information superhighway the money that Malaysia is spending. We have no special expertise, no special advantage, there in any case.

We ignore all the things where we do have a special advantage. The government talks about putting $100 million into a nonsense railway in the Northern Territory, which has not got a hope in hell of ever being viable, when Tasmania is dying on its feet. That is an indictment of the mentality of government—that Tasmania, which represents a far greater proportion of people than the Northern Territory, is dying on its feet while they are going to waste $100 million on a railway. Let us see a cost-benefit analysis before that money is spent. But that money has not been put in to build a railway; it has been put in to pork-barrel the Northern Territory and South Australia governments. That is one of the great tragedies of Australia and we have seen that recurring from both sides of this parliament.

If you are looking at industries, you have to look where we have a natural advantage or where we have a strategic need. I put to this House that an area where a clear natural advantage exists is in chemical production from natural gas, of which we have an abundance. We should be supporting by every means possible the establishment of industries off the North West Shelf to utilise our natural gas. That support should be by capital grants from the government—not by dodgy taxation agreements—open and visible to the public. Governments would say, `We are putting this money into establishing this industry because, once this industry is established, it will be there for the life of the technology, usually about 30 years.' If we cannot make ourselves central to the world in terms of producing over that 30 years, we probably do not deserve to maintain the industry, but I am sure that, given the past record of the initiative of Australian people, we would be able to do that.

In terms of the small business sector, what are we going to do about it? This legislation is clearly not going to do anything. Is the government going to do anything about paying its bills on time? Is the government going to do anything about demanding the purchase of Australian material? I can tell the government this: in any economy, whether it was Joe Stalin's Russia or Ronald Reagan's America—two economies very similar in many ways—the government was the biggest single customer. It always is. Yet we see this opportunity being squandered.

As for a lot of the purchasing that is done and where foreign items are concerned, if the government were to say to the people—often at a very low level of the bureaucracy—who do the purchasing, `Look, we are not saying you have got to buy the Australian product but you have got to put in writing why you did not buy it,' you would find a whole lot more Australian products would be bought. If they were not, we would have a reason; we might be able to go back to have a look at why they were not bought. Often it is not a matter of price. Often the stuff is actually cheaper.

I was in this parliament when we allowed the army to buy Unimogs when the Australian truck was actually cheaper—it was either 50 per cent or two-thirds of the price. We bought them because we allowed the army to go travelling around the world. I was in France some few months later, and I said to the French, `Are you going to buy the Unimog? It is made by your neighbours across the road.' This French colonel looked at me as though I was mad and said, `Monsieur, we make very fine French trucks. Why would we buy a foreign truck?' He is absolutely right. Only the governments of Australia do these crazy things. We see it happening right now in the purchase of army recovery vehicles. They have given the order to Mercedes when they could have bought the Australian vehicle. I can tell the minister now that the Australian vehicle is a damn sight better vehicle. It will certainly be cheaper on its through-life costs.

No other country in the world does this sort of thing, yet you have the Labor and the Liberal parties posturing about support for business. The truth is that, until we have some courage and until there is a determination in this House that we are going to have a manufacturing industry and that we are going to create jobs for workers, conditions for workers will continue to be eroded and there will be nothing that the unions can do about it.

While I am on unions, the unions have got to bear their fair share of the blame for the fiasco in which we see ourselves because I was in the Labor caucus all those days and the left wing of the Labor Party did nothing. When Keating got up and talked about the future being in the service sector, there was not a murmur of dissent from them. They went along with this nonsense. The service sector, of course, is about 85 per cent tourism—low-paid jobs, part-time jobs and jobs for women and kids, not jobs for blue-collar workers. So what have we done as a government? We have disenfranchised the blue-collar worker—he is out of work, his wife is working part time, and his kids are running feral. Does anyone count the cost of that? Do these economic rationalists, who have inhabited both the Liberal and the Labor parties, count the cost of that? No, of course they do not. The truth is that they might have the economic qualifications but you certainly would not let them do a week's shopping for you.